Ever feel like the world just doesn’t make any sense? I get that all the time. I warn you now, the prompt this week from Indies Unlimited took me to a very strange place.

But then, when things seem the strangest, that is when the veneer of the normal slips away and we see the true world. Or something…

Half Dead

Over the course of many months at sea, petty grievances between shipmates can take root and fester into insensate hatred. So it was between Flynn and Avery.

On the beach of some nameless uncharted island off the coast of Cuba, the men walked their ten paces, turned, and simultaneously discharged their flintlocks. Avery lay on the sand, shot in the face, just beneath the left eye.

photo by K.S. Brooks

The unscathed Flynn left Avery for dead. Had it been any man but Avery, that would surely have been the case…

Brought back at the moment he thought he would breathe his last. The metal ball had mushroomed against his titanium skull. A robot sent from the future to restore the natural order of history, he prepared himself to end Flynn’s life. Trapped on the island without witnesses, he lost all pretense as he rose from the sand.

Flynn spun at the sounds though surprise did not register on his face. “I was told that you would come,” he said. “I never believed, the truth was a wild fiction.”

“It’s over Flynn,” Avery-bot said. “You will perish here. The timeline will be restored.” Avery-bot stomped through the sand, his movements fluid, human. The silver metal, exposed by the flintlock’s round glistened with red fluid. He reached up, fingers like pinchers and pulled the flat ball from through the flesh, then tossed it on the ground.

Flynn lifted his left hand. The ring on his index finger reflected the bright sun into Avery’s eyes. He placed his right index finger on the band and spun the ring. Blue and yellow light circled his hand then spun out toward Avery. “I was given this long ago. They said I would know when the time came,” he said. “Never did I suspect that this would be the time. The light pulsed through the hole in Avery’s cheek.

He never understood how it worked but the thing that came toward him dropped to the sand when the light attacked it. It never rose again.

***

Remember to head over to Indies Unlimited and put in a vote for the strangeness of the week.

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Jon Jefferson writes Speculative fiction with forays into Noir and Bizarro. His stories have appeared in Siren's Call Magazine Men of Horror (April 2015) and the Weird Tales Website. His work can also be found on Amazon and Smashwords.
A longtime fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy stories in all their forms, he has spent most of his life looking for magic in the everyday moments of life. He hails from the tundra of Southwest Michigan. The monsters in his life include his wife, two daughters and two granddaughters.

This brought to mind Doctor Who, and the many episodes which show someone from an earlier era dealing with advanced technology — rather than gawp at it, they shrug and decide it’s better to be pragmatic and just use it.

I wonder if the real Avery is still alive, and what that means for the timeline.